The Third Teacher: Creating effective spaces for learning

"In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that promote or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities of a living being." ~ John Dewey

I have always valued the creation learning spaces that best suit the needs of students and a community of learners. I remember when I first began teaching, sitting in my empty classroom in August and imagining what the room might become. In those early days, these decisions were usually made by me, but as I became more experienced, student voice became a critical piece of the design process for our classroom. I came to realise, however, that our conversations were still chained by the traditional reality of our space. Our classroom was still a single room filled with the stuff of schools - student desks, chairs, boards, bookshelves and so on. While much can be done within such a space - I know my students certainly felt good about the rooms we had created for learning and we all accomplished a great deal - I can't help but feel a bit stuck. How can we re-invent schools without changing (drastically) the structure of the building itself? How can we leave classrooms as they were 50 years ago and think that this arrangement still meets the needs of learners today?

Seeking ways to redesign my current learning space, I began to investigate possibilities. I am most impressed by the Maker Movement (a blog post for another day!) and believe that such an approach best supports inquiry-based learning.

Exploring how we might create this type of learning environment for our Primary students led me to the book, The Third Teacher: 79 Ways you can use design to transform teaching & learning. The opening quote spoke to me:

The child starting kindergarten this fall will graduate in the third decade of the 21st century. All we can know about the world she will step into is that it will have challenges and opportunities beyond what we can imagine today, problems and possibilities that will demand creativity and ingenuity, responsibility and compassion. Whether this year's kindergarten student will merely survive or positively thrive in the decades to come depends in large measure in the experiences she has in school. Those experiences will be shaped by adults, by peers, and ultimately by places, by the physical environments where she does her learning. United in the conviction that environment is our children's third teacher, we can begin anew a vital mission: designing today's schools for tomorrow's world.

After reading this book I am firmly committed to making a change to the space I have some control over - the primary computer room. I am setting out on a journey to transform this room; to build a safe place that will promote student innovation, allow for tinkering and time for reflective design thinking. As I enlist the support of colleagues, I will be sharing the ideas from The Third Teacher and The Maker Movement Manifesto. 

Modelling a Mindset: An essential element of technology literacy

"Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right." ~ Henry Ford

Technology provides new opportunities for teaching and learning that were previously not possible and are just downright 'cool'. I love exploring possibilities and seeing how my students might utilise new technologies to enhance their learning. I've come to realise however that my own enthusiasm can, at times, be a double-edged sword.

Image: Ideas, Forte Comunicacio by Magnoroi on Deviant Art 
CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

In my previous blog post I was thinking about what it means to be technologically literate. One of my big 'take aways' was the notion that we must have a growth mindset, one that embraces design thinking where testing, failing and perseverance are critical components of learning and achieving the goals we set for ourselves. I believe that it is important to model this mindset for our students, ensuring that the learning environment we foster encourages this type of exploration and problem solving. I believe this, I say it, I want it, but in the harsh light of day, do I really do it.

I came to this rather startling realisation at about two in the morning one school night as I was learning how to use a new virtual space that I wanted to use with a particular class. Earlier that day, during a collaborative planning session, a teaching team was discussing how students might hold an art exhibit as a part of the summative assessment for an inquiry into how we express ourselves. Of course, I piped up and thought out loud, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could have a virtual exhibit for the students to share their digital creations as well? We could also film or photograph their other pieces (dance, music, paintings, sculptures, etc) and share them in this space so family and friends in other places could view their work!" Very keen to see what might be available and how it might work, I set about my explorations as soon as I got home from work. When I finally looked up and saw the time, I had to seriously ask myself, why am I doing this?

Image: No Frustration by SFoerster on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0

Time. In a traditional classroom time can be quite rigid - you may have a 40 minute class once or twice a week. Perhaps you are fortunate to find yourself in a more flexible environment that allows for the 'dropping of a timetable' occasionally, or even in a school that embraces flexible block scheduling. As a single subject teacher I often feel I do not have enough time to spend with all of the classes. I was so concerned that my students would not have time to prepare a virtual gallery that I solved the problem myself. I spent hours trying to figure it out so my students wouldn't have any difficulty sharing their work. While I may have modelled design thinking in solving this problem, there was no one there to see it. But worse than that, I feel I have robbed my students of an authentic opportunity to tackle a real problem, one that was important and open to being solved in a variety of creative ways.

So often I hear teachers say things like, 'I'd like to use technology, but so often it doesn't work and I end up wasting a whole lesson. We just don't have that kind of time.' Or, during a lesson when something doesn't work, throwing up their hands in frustration and abandoning the lesson. I've balked at this in the past, becoming frustrated myself with the attitude of helplessness that is being demonstrated, often in front of students. And yet, when I look in the mirror, I've just done the same thing myself. While I might have a growth mindset when it comes to integrating technology in teaching and learning, I don't think I am doing a very good job in sharing this with others. Or more importantly, talking about why it is such a critical element of being a technologically literate person.

Image by Wesley Fryer on Moving at the Speed of Creativity CC-BY-2.0

If we want students to be creative and critical thinkers, capable of solving complex and challenging problems, we need to actually provide them opportunities to do this. We need to shift our perspective when things do not work as we had planned and seize these moments as opportunities for learning - real learning, not only for ourselves, but for our students. The next time I feel compelled to solve a technology 'problem' I am going to stop myself and hand it over to the students.

At the end of the day, it is true we might not cover all of the material we intended to with our students, but we need to value what they will learn instead. I'm quite confident that the content of the lesson I had planned is not nearly as important to my students as having them understand they are capable problem solvers and with perseverance can solve the challenges they encounter. It's those times when the technology doesn't work that you have the greatest opportunity for learning. Yes, it was super cool to have our art displayed in a virtual gallery, but at what cost.

Math? Language? History? It's about understanding

"To be truly educated, a student must also make connections across the disciplines, discover ways to integrate the separate subjects, and ultimately relate what they learn to life."
~ Ernest Boyer

To better understand where we are in time as a part of our unit investigations, students have worked collaboratively to create a huge timeline spanning over 4 millennia. We began this mathematical inquiry be discussing what we already know about some of the words associated with time: decade, century and millennium. It didn't take long for students to make connections between other words they have used in math, such as decimal, centimetre, millilitre. How many centimetres in a metre? How many millilitres in a litre? What other words have these beginnings? The connection to the base 10 system was strong and made sense; decades were 10 years, centuries consisted of 100 years and a millenium was, of course 1000 years (this is all leading to a new word study centre 'It's all Greek ~ or Latin ~ to Me', but that is for a later post!).

Once the students understood the parts of the timeline, we looked at a number line we would use in math. While counting from 'Year 1' to today makes a lot of sense for students in Grade 4, go further back in time, Ancient Rome for example, is another story. This led our conversation into a discussion of BC and AD, terms the students had heard before, but what did they mean? Again, a discussion about Latin, as well as the Christian influence in our calendars. We moved on to talk about how today, many scholars agree to call these times the Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE), which we have agreed to use for our timeline. Now a very tricky bit of thinking occurred, if we look at the separating point between BCE and CE (traditionally thought of as the birth of Christ) we know that the numbers get larger from 1 to present day ~ 2012. We explored how the numbers also appear larger as they move farther away from this point in the opposite direction (BCE).

The students then formed 4 groups with each one responsible for the construction of a segment of the timeline. Each segment was to represent one millennium and show the centuries and decades, labelled with the appropriate years. After much measuring (to ensure equal parts of 10) calculating, cutting, labeling and gluing, our timeline is complete and hanging in our classroom.

Lastly we placed the major events and periods of time that the students have investigated as a part of their inquiry into this unit. In doing so, they will have a much greater appreciation of where they are in place and time.